Wendell Owens
Up until now I have not created a lot of controversy. This is about to change.
Introduction
I started farming my own crops when I was in the eleventh grade of high school. In the time between then and 1986 I had many soil tests taken. I believed everything on that sheet. In 1986 I joined with Dr. Dan Skow and we got International Ag Labs going. The first indication I had that my belief system may not have been right was when we started visiting laboratories and found that there were many different opinions. The very first surprise I recall was when we visited a land grant college lab and they showed us the different procedures.
When they got to organic matter, we were told they ranked it in three categories. These were high, medium and low. We asked how they tested them and were told “when we hold it in our hand and it is dark colored, it is high. If it is brownish or grey it is medium, and if it is yellow or very light colored, it is low.” At that time I didn’t know much about the testing procedures of soil, but I knew this wasn’t very scientific. I am now up to 2010 and the controversy still continues. We will look at some of the different procedures and I will share some of the opinions I have formed over the last twenty four years.